Theodor Holm Nelson will be teaching a possibly final, or ‘bucket’, course on all his computer work and ideas. The title is “CINEMA OF THE MIND: Philosophy and Art of Designing Interaction” (Computer Science 194, U.C. Santa Cruz, winter quarter 2013). ☛ Further course details will be found at the end of this note.

The Ted Nelson at the OII

Dr. Nelson is an independent designer and thinker who for fifty years– since before others imagined personal computing or screen-to-screen publishing– has had deep designs for a computer world very different from that we now face. While Microsoft, Apple and the Web veered backward, imitating the past and paper, Nelson always designed for the screens-only world we are at last approaching.

Nelson’s Xanadu document designs, well known if not well understood, are generally recognized as precursors to the World Wide Web. His broader alternative software designs, and their radical theoretical underpinnings, are not well known. This course boosts their survival and the chance some may eventually prevail.

While other software depicts time as conventional clocks and calendars, Nelson shows it as a spiral that can be tightened to nanoseconds or opened to the lifetime of the universe, wherein you can reconcile people’s schedules for next week or annotate historical theories. While others’ bookkeeping systems show only money, Nelson’s applies to all exchanges– money, Christmas cards, favors, grudges. Instead of today’s isolating “apps” and social cattle pens, he plans a sharable, unifying world of interactive diagrams that zoom to all work and reading, with everything annotatable.

His radical infrastructure includes automatically-coupling data structures, an operating system without hierarchy, and connection-lines between the contents of windows. These lead to a completely different computer world, and– he fervently hopes– a different human life around them.

All of this is viewed through Nelson’s Schematic Philosophy, offering new terminology and diagrammatics for analyzing complex subjects.

=== COURSE DETAILS

The class is scheduled for Wednesday afternoons from 4 to 7:30, Engineering 2, room 399. A typical class will consist of a discussion session, a tough lecture, a break, an easy lecture, and another discussion session.

There will be two midterm examinations and a final. Projects for extra credit (leading to a possible A+) must be negotiated in the first three weeks.